1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to methods for retrieving information from an interconnected network and for accessing and delivering the retrieved information to a user, and, more particularly, a method for accessing and retrieving information from an interconnected network such as the internet via a telephone in response to the user's request and for delivering the information via voice, fax-on-demand, e-mail, and other means to the user.
2. Background Art
Under the conventional method of accessing information on an interconnected network such as the internet, the user is required to have a certain amount of computer software and hardware and is expected to have a certain level of computer expertise before the user can successfully access (or browse) a wide range of information now available on the internet. If the user does not have the necessary hardware and the appropriate software to direct the computer to establish a connection to the internet via a modem or a direct connection to the internet, the user would then have no other means available to him or her for accessing the internet.
Given the amount of information now readily available on the internet, having the ability to access the internet becomes a matter of convenience as well as a matter of having access to an invaluable information source.
Additionally, from a company or an organization point of view, it is advantageous to direct customers to a centralized information database and thereby necessitating the maintenance of only one database rather than multiple databases.
The software and hardware requirement for accessing the internet creates a barrier for most people to take advantages of this information source. Prior art systems overcome this problem by providing a telephone fax-on-demand system where a user uses a telephone to dial into a company's web page and directs the system to fax the web page back to the user. However, the manner in operating this type of system is tedious and time consuming. In order for the user to access a hyperlink on the web page, the first web page needs to be faxed back to the user with the hyperlinks numerically annotated for reference. The user then calls a second time (or waits for the first fax page to arrive on another line) to access subsequent web pages numerically using the now numbered hyperlinks.
It is thus clear that a better system is needed to access and browse the internet in an inexpensive and efficient manner.